Brits wouldn’t tolerate their pets receiving the level of care that has become par for the course from the NHS. Worshiping the NHS is much more the national religion than the C of E is in England. So regardless of whether anyone is held to account for any of this, nothing will change on that front until someone burns that institution to the ground.
I agree entirely, as a patient and a dog owner. But this horror? This is the sort of incident that
does get enough public outrage behind it to pass the "something needs to be done" bar at Westminster level.
There's a rehaul of the Mental Health Act bill sitting there ready to go but it never got legislative time in the last parliament due to so much time being reserved for utter bullshit. It needs to be done, now.
The funding for crisis teams, and crisis beds and units, needs to be absolutely assured. It sounds like shroudwaving, but horrors like this one will happen again, and keep happening, until the phonecall of "My family member/friend has completely lost their mind and I'm afraid they are going to hurt someone" is answered, every time, by the arrival of people with the manpower and legal power to take that person to hospital and keep them there.
I'm like every other parent of kids that age. I know that only random circumstance meant those kids were the ones killed. My own kids have been to some Taylor-themed dance party this holidays, just like the Southport one. I thought absolutely nothing of leaving them there for a couple of hours. I assessed the risk of the event, and expected absolutely nothing to happen, same as the other activity bullshit they've been doing all holidays. I send them to birthday parties and craft days and all this shit with hardly a thought beyond checking out if it's a legit event and the PVGs are all in place. This is everyday bullshit that kids do. There are three mothers out there who did the
exact same thing I did, and their babies are
never coming home.
The only difference between these poor mothers and me is that the violent mentally ill person lived near them, and not near me. That's all. There's nothing you can do to defend your children against that awful and random (from a parent's perspective) an event. This is frightening to parents of young kids on a visceral, instinctive level for that reason. And the parents of the UK are looking for someone to blame. First it was Muslims, then immigrants, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually be the police and the NHS. There is plenty blame and fear to go around.
We have a mental health system that just doesn't work at all any more. I think this is the terrible reality of that being brought home to many people for the first time.
I could be wrong. Maybe the lad was not mental, maybe it was not a psychotic break. But I suspect I'm right, and that frightens me more.